Jones laughed. 'The Navy could always take the Merchant Marine at anything.'
'You bastards still got yourselves sunk. A battleship yet!'
'Yeah,' Jones said thoughtfully, toying with his eye patch, remembering the death of his ship, the Houston, and the deaths of his buddies and the loss of his eye.
The King walked the length of the hut. Max was still sitting beside his bed and the big black box that was chained to it.
'Okay, Max,' the King said. 'Thanks. You can quit now.'
'Sure.' Max had a well-used face. He came from West Side New York and he had learned the lessons of life from those streets at an early age.
His eyes were brown and restless.
Automatically the King took out his tobacco box and gave Max a little of the raw tobacco.
'Gee, thanks,' Max said. 'Oh yeah, Lee told me to tell you he's done your laundry. He's getting chow today — we're on the second shift — but he told me to tell you.'
'Thanks.' The King took out his pack of Kooas and a momentary hush fell upon the hut. Before the King could get his matches out, Max was striking his native flint lighter.
'Thanks, Max.' The King inhaled deeply. Then, after a pause, he said,
'You like a Kooa?'
'Jesus, thanks,' Max said, careless of the irony in the King's voice.
'Anything else you want?'
'I'll call you if I need you.'
Max walked down the hut to sit on his string bed beside the door. Eyes saw the cigarette but mouths said nothing. It was Max's. Max had earned it. When it was their day to guard the King's possessions, well, maybe they'd get one too.
Dino smiled at Max, who winked back. They would share the cigarette after chow. They always shared what they could find or steal or make.
Max and Dino were a unit.
And it was the same throughout the world of Changi. Men ate and trusted in units. Twos, threes, rarely fours. One man could never cover enough ground, or find something edible and build a fire and cook it and eat it —not by himself. Three was the perfect unit. One to forage, one to guard what had been foraged and one spare. When the spare wasn't sick, he too foraged or guarded. Everything was split three ways: if you got an egg or stole a coconut or found a banana on a work party or made a touch somewhere, it went to the unit. The law, like all natural law, was simple.
Only by mutual effort did you survive. To withhold from the unit was fatal, for if you were expelled from a unit, the word got around. And it was impossible to survive alone.
But the King didn't have a unit. He was sufficient unto himself.
His bed was in the favored corner of the hut, under a window, set just right to catch the slightest breeze. The nearest bed was eight feet away.
The King's bed was a good one. Steel. The springs were tight and the mattress filled with kapok. The bed was covered with two blankets, and the purity of sheets peeped from the top blanket near the sun-bleached pillow. Above the bed, stretched tight on posts, was a mosquito net. It was blemishless.
The King also had a table and two easy chairs, and a carpet on either side of the bed. On a shelf, behind the bed, was his shaving equipment-razor, brush, soap, blades - and beside them, his plates and cups and homemade electric stove and cooking and eating implements. On the corner wall hung his clothes, four shirts and four long pants and four short pants. Six pairs of socks and underpants were on a shelf. Under the bed were two pairs of shoes, bathing slippers, and a shining pair of Indian chappals.
The King sat on one of the chairs and made sure that everything was still in place. He noticed that the hair he had placed so delicately on his razor was no longer there. Crummy bastards, he thought, why the hell should I risk catching their crud. But he said nothing, just made a mental note to lock it up in future.
'Hi,' said Tex. 'You busy?'
'Busy' was another password. It meant 'Are you ready to take delivery?'
The King smiled and nodded and Tex carefully passed over the Ronson lighter. 'Thanks,' the King said. 'You like my soup today?'
'You bet,' Tex said and walked away.
Leisurely the King examined the lighter. As the major had said, it was almost new. Unscratched. It worked every time. And very clean. He unscrewed the flint screw and examined the flint. It was a cheap native flint and almost finished, so he opened the cigar box on the shelf and found the Ronson flint container and put in a new one. He pressed the lever and it worked. A careful adjustment of the wick and he was satisfied.
The lighter was not a counterfeit and would surely bring eight hundred, nine hundred dollars.
From where he was sitting he could see the young man and the Malay.
They were still hard at it, yaketty, yaketty.
'Max,' he called out quietly.
Max hurried up the length of the hut. 'Yeah?'
'See that guy,' the King said, nodding out the window.
'Which one? The Wog?'
'No. The other one. Get him for me, will you?'
Max slipped out of the window and crossed the path. 'Hey, Mac,' he said abruptly to the young man. 'The King wants to see you,' and he jerked a thumb towards the hut. 'On the double.'
